Snapshots

Con AU [with commentary]

I used a prompt generator last night, and I didn't like the direction this fic was going so I stopped writing it, but here it is with some ~commentary, to maybe give some insight into my process.

"Somehow we need to persuade him to part with a million dollars." [This was the sentence I was prompted with. I didn't know who should say it; I just slapped it down and tried to think of who the person was talking about. I think about writing as if I'm watching a movie, and right now the picture's not clear. If I'm using a story-starter prompt like this, it often goes this way. Imagine a line of dialogue being spoken over a black screen--that's what I'm starting with in my head.]

"Easy," Scott groans, "just tell him it's for new clothes he doesn't need." [I wanted the first response to the prompted line to be "Easy." Who drops ridiculous amounts of money easily? Mitch, obviously. Who's close enough to Mitch to tease him about it? Scott, obviously. Scott groaning at this point just means he's mildly or playfully frustrated, maybe rolling his eyes. I'm making up this fic line by line; I have no idea where it's going.]

"That's not nice," Kirstie says warningly. As if she'd run off and tell Mitch what Scott said about him. [When I wrote Kirstie's dialogue, I figured Mitch was in the room. But what would up the drama more? If Scott said it with a little more malice, if Kirstie was a little more offended on Mitch's behalf. If Scott was badmouthing him without Mitch even being there.]

Scott rolls his eyes. He's done being nice. All the things he thought were cute or quirky about Mitch are now a pain in the ass, and while he hates the things Mitch does, he can't quite bring himself to hate Mitch. [What did Mitch do? Why is Scott mad? Who knows. But he is, and he's being a dick about it. Why? Because I love writing drama. Simple as that. Scott's feelings here are also something I've been dealing with lately, but as soon as I wrote them down I wanted to steer away from putting any personal emotions in this fic. It often comes across as too preachy or too pretentiously self-obsessed to use a character to voice your exact feelings. It also feels more out of control to write, because you're too close to your own situation and can't properly see how good of a story it would make from an unbiased point of view. By the end of the sentence I'd distanced myself again, which makes it kind of funny to read back now.]

"Is Scott ever nice?" Avi asks. He sounds skeptical, which stings a bit. [Up until this line, it wasn't AU. But the idea of Scott and Mitch having this much of a falling out in real life wasn't sitting right, not with such little thought to the backstory and reason, so with Avi's line, this is vaulted into another universe. It's the "skeptical" that does it: Avi hasn't known Scott when Scott was happy and cheerful during his friendship with Mitch; Avi's only known him as the bitter, post-falling-out Scott. Another thing about this line is that it maintains Scott's limited point of view by using "sounds" and describing how that tone makes Scott feel, rather than stating that Avi is skeptical and describing the physicality of Scott's reaction. If it was another person's POV, you might say that Scott cringes or recoils at Avi's tone, because a third party would only see Scott's reaction and not know for sure how he feels. This is important when trying to maintain consistent POV.]

"I'm nice!" Scott cries. "Mitch is the one who's not nice." [Just establishing their falling-out a little bit more by making Scott defensive and bitter.]

"Don't say that," Kirstie cuts in quickly. "Mitch is perfectly nice, just... maybe not to you... And yeah, Avi, Scott used to be nice, if you can believe it. He used to be all about positivity and happiness, and somewhere along the way he turned into this asshole." [Thank god Kirstie's around to set the scene and provide a tiny bit of exposition. You guys probably know by now that I prefer to start fics "in media res" (which means in the middle of things) and add exposition and backstory in little drips until the whole picture is clear. It's because I find info-dumps incredibly boring to read. It's also because, if I'm writing off the cuff like this, I usually don't know the backstory myself until it becomes necessary to come up with it. This is where the AU scenario gets tricky, though, because it's not planned out: Kirstie's still on good terms with Scott and Mitch, made clear by that "maybe not to you" line, and the fact that she's so quick to bite back at Scott. Whatever their fight was about, there wasn't a clear good guy and bad guy. I'm still making this AU up as I go along, so whatever my brain spits out, I try to work with. I'm enjoying the snappy dynamic of Scott and Kirstie bickering so I want that to continue.]

"Hey! It was all him." [Defensive again. Childish, too.]

"Mitch didn't make you a dick." [Casual insults! That means Kirstie's frustrated. Not every line needs an adverb.]

"Whatever," Avi says, shaking his head. "Are we scamming this guy or not? Because if it's too personal for you, we need to find a new mark ASAP." [Here's where I finally settled on a concept: con men/heists. Which I love! But it takes planning and outlining, neither of which I'm doing for this one. This was the moment I realized I wasn't going to continue this fic. This was also the moment when I decided which characters were in the room: if Kevin or anyone else was present, it would be their turn to speak or at least make their presence known, but since I knew this was just a writing exercise, I didn't want to make my job more complicated by adding more people. Anything over three is a pain in the ass to deal with.]

"It took Mitch turning into an annoying pop star for me to really see him, that's all. I realized how much bullshit he spews and I moved on." [I rewrote this line a few times--and I try to avoid rewriting as much as possible with these nonsense one-offs. The exercise is like NaNoWriMo to me, all about getting words on paper even if it's crappy. This is still a really bad line of dialogue, but because this isn't a real fic, I didn't much care. It just took several minutes to decide what Mitch's supposed crime was, why Scott could possibly be so mad at him. It's a mess but the specifics don't matter; it's Scott's emotions I'm interested in. If this was a real fic, I might make this a placeholder line instead--dialogue flow means Scott has to say something, has to explain in some capacity, but I could highlight the line and come back to it when I'd nailed down the backstory.]

Kirstie gives him a hard look, because she knows at least part of the real story, but she doesn't speak. [Kirstie's the most interesting character so far, because she knows Scott's side of the story and Mitch's side--neither of which I know. I almost wish it was from her POV, but that would be terrible: it's never good to have a character who knows everything. There's no drama and no uncertainty there. The fun comes from the POV character learning.]

"I don't care," Avi says. "Is he our mark?" [Me, wanting to end this writing exercise. Avi, as the unattached third party to the trio's drama, again brings the focus back to the plot (if there was plot).]

Kirstie sighs and nods. "He's got the money to spare and we can get close. Or, I can. And Avi too, probably. We just need to work out our angle." [I vaguely wanted to write Kirstie interacting with Mitch, or Avi trying to seduce Mitch as a clueless straight boy, but I'm limited to Scott's point of view. It might be interesting to have Scott in a surveillance van or something, but a character who purely observes events and doesn't actively participate in them is a pain to write and annoying to read. I also, at this point in my evening of writing, wanted to be done and I knew this wasn't going anywhere good. So I gave up.]

I hope this was mildly interesting, maybe to the other writers out there. I think I got more out of writing some commentary than I did writing the ficlet. Let me know your thoughts!